Belarusian Students Arrested by Security on Saturday for Another Protest

Four consecutive weekends of protests have taken place against Belarusian President Lukashenka since he claimed victory in his controversial re-election bid, Reuters reported on September 5. On Saturday (Sept. 5), masked men dragged students off the streets and bundled them into boxcars.

The Russian state news agency TASS quoted Minsk police as saying that up to 30 people had been detained for taking part in an unauthorized protest.

Students wearing red and white opposition flags protested at several locations in the capital, including outside the Minsk State Linguistic University, where police had arrested five people the previous Friday, local media video showed.

BY showed masked officers elsewhere dragging away students gathered in a restaurant on Karl Marx Street in downtown Minsk, with some of the protesters chanting “court!” The march was followed by a march in Minsk that afternoon by thousands of women.

Thousands of women then marched in Minsk that afternoon, “Don’t touch the children” being one of their slogans.

Lukashenko, a former manager of a collective farm in the former Soviet Union, has tried to stem the tide of protests and strikes since announcing last month that he had won a sixth term in office, with the opposition claiming that he rigged the election. Lukashenko, on the other hand, denies that the election was rigged.

Lukashenko has previously dismissed the neo-coronavirus pandemic as a “mental illness” that he believes can be solved by drinking vodka and taking saunas.

But on Saturday, he appeared to denounce protesters as spreading the disease. We are walking up and down the streets, shoulder to shoulder,” he said at a televised government meeting. “Where’s the social distance to maintain? Our actions are delaying our goodbye to this disease. This is unacceptable.”

On Tuesday, coinciding with the start of the new school year, thousands of people took part in a protest. At Minsk State Linguistic University, students sang “Can You Hear the People Sing”, a protest song from the musical “Les Miserables”.